This stone-walled village, with the noise of Derby barely a mile away and in sight of its towers and spires, stands at the gate of a great estate which is now a fine public park where we may wander at will...along the drive with beautiful rhododendrons and great trees, above the winding River Derwent, in and out of glass-houses fragrant with scents and ablaze with colour.
The great house, also known as Darley Abbey, after the 12th century Augustinian priory which was once the biggest and most important in Derbyshire, has gone, and the scanty remains of the priory, down in the hollow, are built up into dwellings. Near them is a great cotton mill on the Derwent built in 1783, and it is a fine sight to see the mighty rush of water through the sluice gates when the mill is still.
Crowning a hilltop above the village is the church, built in 1818, its walls rising from a churchyard of lawn and great trees. In the churchyard is buried a man whose voice was often heard within a stones-throw of London's Fleet Street, for he was Alfred Ainger, who was born in the first year of the Victorian era and known all over England as a preacher and lecturer. He was known best of all for the sermons he preached in the Temple Church. He was at school with the sons of Charles Dickens, and the novelist taught him to act and recite. He was a friend of Tennyson and of George du Maurier, to whom he suggested many of the subjects for his Punch drawings. He wrote the life of Charles Lamb and some favourite hymns, and he loved beauty all his life.
To the south of the park was discovered in recent years the remains of an early Roman fort, older than that at Little Chester, on the other side of the river, but the site these days are covered with housing.
